can you help me unravel
by tints
Summary: "She swears her mouth burns all throughout the ceremony." Or the one where Caroline is so not all right. ( missing scene, season four. )


**disclaimer:** i do not own these characters.

written for the team barbie ficathon on livejournal to the prompt _Caroline, everyone else is mourning Alaric, but all Caroline can think of is number two pencils and vervain_. i feel like the show never deals with caroline's trauma and i felt like, hey, why not deal with it now? based on speculation on 4x02 which, since the airing of the episode, has proved me wrong and makes this a missing scene, if you will. title from anna nalick's _breathe (2am)_.

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**can you help me unravel**

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She swears her mouth burns all throughout the ceremony.

Elena hosts a very small wake after the funeral. Caroline brings cake, because everyone loves cake, right? She's cutting it up, a large knife in her hand, when someone enters the kitchen. She doesn't jump when she hears him speak. She doesn't feel fright any more. Sensing and hearing things coming from a mile away kind of helps with that. Except for when Council members jump her right by her front door.

"Hey," Stefan says, hands in his pockets as he tentatively enters the kitchen. He stands by her, giving her distance, his eyes never really leaving her face. She wonders why he does this now, picking up the pieces he left in his wake when he ditched them for Klaus. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine," she says, eyes still on her mud cake. She's slicing it up slowly. Stalling. If she stays in here until Elena's ready to be left alone, then that means she won't run her mouth when the inevitable discussion of how Alaric's such a good guy arises. It happened with her dad. It happened with John Gilbert. It's, like, a funeral thing, to talk about the good things while swallowing down the really bad memories. She feels she knows this song and dance by now, how funerals are meant to pan out. "Just trying to get this cake all ready!"

Stefan's quiet for a few moments. "It's okay, you know," he says. He hears what she doesn't say. He always has. But she wonders why he's not pretending to ignore it like he has for the past few months. Her friendship bracelet making with Stefan has been temporarily on hold for the last few months. "To hate him just a little."

"I don't," she says a bit too quickly. "I don't hate _him_."

Stefan stays quiet.

"I just -" She takes a deep breath in before her brows furrow together. "Why do you even care?" she glances at him, flipping her hair over her shoulder. The knife stays lodged in the cake, unmoving, deep within it like two pencils in flesh. She still scrubs her face and hands raw whenever she has a moment, intent of removing the lingering smell of vervain from her skin. She feels like she can smell it now, wrapping itself around her entire being like a scarf.

"You're my friend," he says, the smile slipping from his face. His brows furrow. It's like the pieces of who he remembers her to be aren't adding up in his head.

Caroline scoffs, rolling her eyes as she returns to slicing the cake.

"I care," he says, loudly, more like he's trying to convince himself more than her. Maybe he's still fighting with that alter ego of his. She wonders what that's like, having an overpowering alter ego. Is there any room left to fight? "I care about how you're doing. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here."

"I wasn't aware I was on your radar for anything any more," she mumbles. Stefan's still Stefan, deep down beneath all the ripping and hair gel. She thinks about not saying what she wants to say, but this is Stefan. He once asked her to be real with him, as bare as she can be, and so she thinks about taking advantage of that. Put all this on him because he's so unfeeling he can handle it. Sparing him a glance, she narrows her eyes, "Do you know what he did to me? Were you even aware I was in the school?"

He ducks his head. "Yes."

She doesn't glance away from him. Her eyes are hard on his face, taking in his cheekbones, how thin he seems to be when he doesn't even need to eat at all. "Then why is it that _Klaus_ was the first person I saw after Elena?"

He glances up, "Caroline -"

"Why is it that the big bad wolf is the one person who seems to care about me? You didn't." She takes in a deep breath. She doesn't realise her use of past tense. Her faith in Stefan will always be there. An eternity as two best friends who bond over bunnies. It's hard to let that go. She keeps looking at him square in the eye. "Alaric didn't."

Stefan takes a step forward. "Caroline -"

"Seriously," she finds herself taking a step back, glancing at her cake. "How can one person let themselves be overtaken by some monster and not do a thing about it?"

"He tried," Stefan's voice sounds like it's pleading for her to understand. Caroline's very understanding of the things she's never around to see unfold, but she's tired of always understanding _after_ she's felt the sun blister her skin and vervain weaken her entire system to the point where she's convinced she's being chained to cement and being dropped into the ocean. "He didn't mean it, Caroline. That wasn't Alaric. You -"

"I understand," she says, voice louder. "I get that it wasn't him. But it still was him. And I can't really be here pretending to be sad that he's gone with people who are genuinely upset that he's dead because all I can think about is how relieved I am that I'm no longer in that classroom or running from him." She places the knife down on the counter, watching as the crumbs clinging to it let go and scatter on the surface. She grabs hold of her wrist to steady it. She can feel herself shaking. She waits for her entire being to start vibrating with nerves that should be long past dead. Stefan's right beside her now, not touching her.

"It's okay to hate him, Caroline."

"Is it?" her eyebrows raise as she turns to look at him. "I'm hating someone I actually liked for actions that he had no control over."

"You're not hating him," Stefan ducks his head to catch her eyes when she glances away. "You're hating the thing he became. Alaric died the night of the dance. That thing - He was just a vessel. And you have every right to hate him for what he did to you, Caroline."

She looks away. "I just feel guilty," she says. "I still hate my dad for what he did. I trusted him."

"Trust is a hard thing to repair," Stefan glances away now. If she bothers to look, she can see the shame coating his face, the way his eyebrows pull together in thought. "It just takes time. And the hate - It'll go away."

She inhales deeply, "Just not today."

"No," he shakes his head. "Trust takes time. So does forgiveness."

"I guess it's lucky I have forever, then." Even if she doesn't quite believe it.


End file.
